Recently I keep hearing more and more about Zappos.com the online footwear and clothing outlet store. I’ve seen them from time to time when I search for shoes online – I think I may have even ordered from them in the past – but they’ve recently been in the news due to their huge growth in just the last few years. “Huge” as in a growing their gross merchandise sales from 1.6 million to over 1 billion – in just 8 years!
How did they do this, you ask? By focusing squarely on customer service.
Zappos has received enormous accolades for its bend-over-backwards approach to customer service. They offer everything from free shipping both ways, a 365 day return policy and a 24/7 call center to name a few. They have even been known to deliver a 4-day shipping item as next day – just to surprise their customers.
Who wouldn’t love all that?
I was reading a press release in PRWeb today about Parafest ’09 (Parature’s conference – the global leader in on-demand customer service software). What caught my eye was Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, was the keynote speaker for the worldwide conference (see press release here). In his address, he focused on how his company focuses solely on the customer experience to retain customer loyalty, as well as building those core values and culture within the company itself.
Speaking of building core values and culture within the company – did you know their employees go through a paid 4-week customer loyalty training course? Did you also know Zappos offers their new employees $2000 to leave after they’ve received the training? – no questions asked? Incredible! The point being for this is to ensure their employees are there because they love the job, not just for the money. And if you wondered; only 3% of the new employees took the money and ran.
With dedication like that, it’s no wonder that Zappos has grown primarily through customer loyalty and word-of-mouth. It’s rarely heard of in this day and age that a company will go to such lengths to please its customers.
But it just goes to show that everything I’ve been talking about on this blog is true – you CAN grow your business by simply improving your customer service. And not just doing it in ways that everybody else does it – but by doing it even better.
